Sunday, June 22, 2008

Do you know those candy bars that you take on your backpack for a day out? You know the ones I'm talking about, the kind that are individual wraped and have the bottom covered in chocolate. The ones that almost feel like eating a candy bar, but you don't mind eating them because you convince yourself that it's cereal so it's healthy... At least that's what I do anyway...
But some times you take the bar with you, forget about the "healthiness" of it and eat a real candy bar, or an ice cream or that piece of cake your aunt made or whatever and the poor bar comes back home a little bit mistreated from the bottom of the bag where it sat the all day. So the next time you go out and decide to take a bar you take a "new" one and think that you'll eat that wrinkled skashed one when you're at home. Obviously you never do beacuse you just made a batch of cookies or that ice cream you have in the freezer is more appealing.

So next thing you know you have 4 ugly looking bars and you know it's time to take an action: You decide Cookies! Or at least I decided that anyway...

Because I wanted them puffy I used this recipe as a base, since I liked it so much.

CEREAL BAR COOKIES

220 gr (8 oz) butter room temperature but not very soft

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs

360 gr (13 oz) stong/bread flour

1/3 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

4 cereal bars cut into chunks

Beat butter and both sugars just until they come together. Don’t over-beat. Add the eggs and beat just until incorporated. Mix together the flour, salt and baking powder . When thoroughly mixed, add to batter and stir just until blended. Stir in the cereal bar chunks and any other flavouring you fancy*. Scoop into a cookie sheet or drop by rounded tablespoons. The dough should be neither sticky nor dry. Bake on pre-heated oven at 180ºC (350ºF) for about 12 minutes or until done. Cool on sheet for about 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

* As I like variety I divided the dough into 4 and added a little different touch to each one:

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp grounded cardamom

1 orange (rind) + 3 tbs raisins

1 tbsp cocoa powder + 2 tbs dark chocolate chunks

And here's a tip: whenever you're baking chocolate cookies and have similar non chocolate cookies to bake as well, on the sheet you have the chocolate ones, place a "white" one so you can check on doneness by its color.

those look pretty yummy..and not too bad for you! Cant beat that!!!Thanks for the comment on my sleeping beauty birthday cake. It was quite an undertaking! It was massive. I think a 16" round double layer cake feeds like 80 people!!! We only had 30 people at the party! So needless to say..we had over half of the cake left!!